Application crash via unbounded nested-group recursion
Published Sep 19, 2024 · Updated Sep 8, 2025
Denial of service in Google Protocol Buffers Java, Kotlin, and JRuby runtimes allows remote attackers to crash parsing applications. Unknown-field and map parsing recursively processes arbitrarily nested SGROUP tags without enforcing the recursion limit, exhausting the Java stack. Exploitation requires a consuming application to parse attacker-controlled Protocol Buffers data; the bounded consequence is termination of that process.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Google Protocol Buffers Java, Kotlin, and JRuby runtimes allows remote attackers to crash parsing applications. Unknown-field and map parsing recursively processes arbitrarily nested SGROUP tags without enforcing the recursion limit, exhausting the Java stack. Exploitation requires a consuming application to parse attacker-controlled Protocol Buffers data; the bounded consequence is termination of that process.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2024-7254
- Published
- Sep 19, 2024
- Updated
- Sep 8, 2025
- Vendor
- Product
- protobuf-kotlin-lite
- Classifications
- T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 19, 2024CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 8, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=0 <3.25.5
- Affected versionversion=0 <4.27.5
- Affected versionversion=0 <4.28.2
- Affected versionversion=4.27 <4.27.5
- Affected versionversion=4.28 <4.28.2
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Upstream nested-group parser regression testsproof of concept · demonstrated
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
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